Few (if any) cable newsers have covered the Mueller investigation with as much consistency, and, shall we say, intensity over the past 22 months than Rachel Maddow has.
What transpired on Sunday should Maddow’s current perdicament a bit difficult.
Attorney General Bill Barr released a four-page report summarizing the Special Counsel’s findings from the lengthy investigation on Sunday, and made the conclusion that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
There’s also a strong possibility that Barr won’t release Mueller’s full report, which means it’s time for her and other progressives to finally move on. Right?
In the words of longtime ESPN college football analyst Lee Corso: Not so fast, my friends.”
In fact, The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi writes that “the queen of collusion, is not backing down.”
“Maddow’s monologue suggests she is unmoved by the many attacks on her for promoting a Russia conspiracy that, at least according to the attorney general, seems to have run aground,” Farhi writes. “Her nightly deconstructions of the case against Trump have made her the signal figure of the anti-Trump left and have abetted her rise to the most popular figure in cable news.”
On Monday night’s broadcast of The Rachel Maddow Show, the first since Barr released his summary of Mueller’s findings, Maddow seemed to focus more on whether President Trump obstructed justice, something the special counsel Mueller didn’t seem to determine in his report either way, and the role of Trump-appointed Attorney General Barr.
As one might expect, MSNBC president Phil Griffin has his talent’s collective back, especially Maddow. She’s absolutely vital to the success of MSNBC. Her commentary about Trump and the Republican party drives her show’s massive ratings (she was No. 1 in cable news as recent as January), and she has made MSNBC competitive in the cable news race over the past couple years. An argument can be made that Maddow is vital to the success of MSNBC as Hannity is to Fox News. Perhaps even moreso.
One MSNBC source apparently told Vanity Fair’s Joe Pompeo that in regard to the Trump-Russia story, “there was an omnipresent awareness that this was, strategically, a very important story for us” and “there was no market for skepticism about it.”
Griffin remarked to Pompeo, “This is a huge story. The president of the United States was the subject of an investigation by our own government. That probe has produced 34 criminal indictments so far. And we know the Russians interfered with our election. Our journalists, legal analysts, and prime-time hosts are covering the biggest story in politics and national security with distinction.”